Rutland u3a monthly meeting

Speaker: Bharat Patel

Bharat was one of the first Asian reporters on British Radio and TV. His family left India for Zambia and then migrated to England.  He arrived in Leicester armed with just a few words of English, including the phrase, ‘The dog barks at the fog’ as well as the more familiar,  ‘the cat sat on the mat’.  A teacher had told him that Indians always speak with their teeth clenched, whereas the English speak with their mouths open and enunciate.  This advice helped him to get a job at the BBC at a time when accents of any sort -
Indian, Brummie or Geordie - were frowned upon.  Bharat has worked for BBC Radio Leicester, Radio 4, ITV and BBC TV and has covered events which have made headlines around the world.

Talk: Indian Takeaway - one boy's take on 3 continents

There was one story that Bharat had never covered and that was his own.  His family left comfortable lifestyles in India and Zambia after a soothsayer had told his parents that his future lay in England.  They exchanged warm, sunny climates for a tiny terraced house with an outside toilet and a leaking roof in an altogether colder greyer corner of the world.  Their arrival was followed by a series of bizarre and comic incidents which were often odder than anything Bharat encountered as a reporter.  

These are the subject of his talk and of a book of the same name.  All proceeds from the talk and the publication go to the Hope Against Cancer Charity.  Copies of the book will be on sale for £10 cash.